During a Fresno State spring practice session Ryan Mathews, left, talks with the team's longtime head coach Pat Hill. In the distance at right is Bulldog Stadium.
— Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Rich Cornford, the head football coach at Frontier High School in Bakersfield, points out Ryan Mathews playing in a game for West High School in a video on his computer in his office. Rich was the head coach at West ...
— Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

Portrait of Frontier High School head football coach Rich Cornford, at right, and assistant coach Mike Lewis, at left, at the two year old school's stadium. Both were coaches of Ryan Mathews at West High School across town.
— Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

#21 Ryan Mathews, of West High School in Bakersfield, is shown scoring a touchdown in a CIF playoff game video playing on the computer of Ryan's former head football coach Rich Cornford, at right, who is now the head football ...
— Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

At the end of a Fresno State spring practice session longtime head coach Pat Hill (foreground with cap) leads a birthday cheer for player Anthony Williams (#91 in the middle).
— Charlie Neuman / San Diego Union-Tribune/Zuma Pre

FRESNO  At various points on the figurative and literal road between Bakersfield and Fresno and on to San Diego, Ryan Mathews could have veered into the ditch where potential withers up and dies, its promise mourned for a time but then forgotten.

It seems so unfathomable now that his talent might have never been YouTubed or stolen the breath of so many, that A.J. Smith would not have been another in a long line of those who have fallen in love with him.

But consider that for various reasons, not the least of which being the wholly teenager ability to blend rebellion and apathy, there was a period when Mathews wasn’t enjoying football and wanted to quit.

He was 18 years old and essentially on his own as his mom worked and stayed in another town. He would be up late then sleep through his morning classes at Bakersfield’s West High. By the time anyone noticed his grade-point average was no longer at 3.0, he had three failing marks.

At one point, Mathews told the adults who intervened that he might just end up going to work on the power lines, make a living and ride his beloved dirt bikes on weekends.

And there it might have ended, for all intents and purposes.

Not that working the power lines is anything less than noble, but more than a few folks would have lamented what became of that oh-so-talented Mathews kid.

Children certainly would never have been trick or treating on the Bakersfield streets dressed as him.

But the fact that Mathews didn’t slip into that ditch — and the myriad reasons for that — is why the Chargers made the bold move of tabbing the Fresno State running back to fill a departed legend’s backfield footprint.

For the right to draft Mathews, the Chargers moved up 16 spots in the first round of last month’s NFL draft, giving up their coveted second-round pick and linebacker Tim Dobbins and ensuring they’d be paying an extra $8 million or so.

And amongst the vast dustiness that is California’s Central Valley lie the answers to the question of why the Chargers think this is the young man who can handle the pressure of not only succeeding an icon but proving he was worth the price.

“Some stuff in a guy’s makeup is an indication of what they’re going to become,” Chargers head coach Norv Turner said.

It is with a shrug, almost detached, that Mathews explains so many things about himself. He has, after all, been him his whole life.

But he knows where he came from made him who he is and will help him as he works toward what he hopes to be.

“I think if I came from a different background — if I had a dad around, if we had money, if I had things handed to me — I think I would be different than I am,” he said. “I don’t know if I would have worked as hard when I had to.”